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Gameloft attempts to take over EA Sports’ Fifa series… on the N-Gage at least. By the time the N-Gage has been out for a bit over a year, it will have two soccer games. EA Sports’ FIFA 2004 and Gameloft’s Marcel Desailly Pro Soccer are already out, and EA Sports will ship FIFA 2005 in November. While I haven’t played either FIFA title, Marcel is good enough to satisfy soccer fans.
Since I’m not that big of a soccer enthusiast, I’m not really sure who Marcel Desailly is but a quick Google search reveals 64,000 results so I’m guessing he’s quite popular. Unfortunately, Gameloft decided to only license him and didn’t actually license the various players nor did they license the actual teams. Nonetheless there are 32 national teams and 32 “club” teams each with different stats.
The game features four main gameplay modes. Friendly, is the game’s exhibition mode and you are able to choose the difficulty, stadium and duration before heading off. There are also three Cup modes. In International Cup, you’ll be playing with the national teams, while in Championship Cup; you’ll be playing with the club teams. In addition, there is a Classic cup mode which lets you pick either club or national teams. There is also a League and Career mode for the diehard soccer fans.
The actual gameplay is standard soccer fare. You need to aggressively pass the ball to your teammates so you can get close to the goal and score. You’ll also need to provide defense (you’re able to change the formation on the spot) and switch characters to steal the ball from the opposing team.
The only problem with the gameplay is that occasionally, you’ll think you have a steal and the game won’t count it. Other times, you’ll pass the ball to a teammate and inexplicably, get the ball stolen without much hardship. Thankfully, these problems don’t happen frequently.
Controlling is rather easy. Although there are many buttons to use for a whole bunch of different passes, for most part you’ll be sticking to the main passing button, the shooting button and the player switch button. Since you don’t need to press these together, at the same time, the QD handles the controls very well.
The game’s visuals do a good job of conveying the high energy and enthusiasm that soccer fans have towards their sport. Each game begins with a pan around the arena, and you’ll see the crowd and what not. Aside from that, the field is quite plain with only a few advertisements polluting it. The characters are small, 2D sprites and probably because of their size, look good. Thankfully, while initially a bit small, the camera never becomes an obstacle since you’ll see a reasonable portion of the field.
The audio is pretty good, also. The crowds cheer believably with the aforementioned enthusiasm and you’ll hear horns going off. Additionally, the menus include a cheerful tune to go along with the game.
Marcel Desailly Pro Soccer is a solid, portable rendition of soccer although the lack of licensed players and teams, and some collision issues don’t quite allow it to be an absolutely recommendable N-Gage title. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Sep 17, 2004
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